Radio Chatter
by ghost.713
Summary: Sometimes it's worthwhile just to listen in. Here you'll find assorted ficlets featuring characters big and small. UPDATE: Miranda knows kids. Even big, smelly, armored ones.
1. The hushed casket

**I do not own _Mass Effect_.**

Drabbles, oneshots and all things in-between - they'll all go here. Expect variety with warnings where appropriate.  
**Note:** Kolyat/Oriana-focused tidbits will be uploaded under _The Hitman and the Clone_.  
Thank you for reading!

* * *

**The Hushed Casket**

* * *

There is fire and then there is only the yawning dark.

_(Breathe.)_

Her breaths heave ragged in the vacuum, each one ticking by the seconds since she last saw a face white behind flames and screaming her name while the _Normandy _retched her out into the -

_(Blackness above, below, beyond, within, outside.)_

_-_ empty void.

_(One breath, two breaths.)_

She is angry. She is afraid. She is -

(SERVICE NO. 5923-AC-2826, REQUESTING ASSISTANCE - )

There is nothing to hold onto. Her limbs flail at emptiness, brush against nothing. There is no friction, no sense of stability, and no sense of _self _aside from the fog of breath at her lips and the lurching of a heart within her chest. Said muscle quivers and she drifts, fractionally, spinning with the force of one more beat.

_(Movement in the vacuum; movement within her.)_

Ribs crackle against the interior of her hardsuit when she estimates the damage done by the _Normandy_'s last throes. Some part of her wants to see it; to salute the only headstone so many of her crew will ever know.

But she can't. There is nothing to pivot on and so she simply trails the shadow of the planet known as Alchera where it curves into its sun.

_(A hiss in her ear.)_

Her lips crack and her mouth goes dry. It is flecked with tiny spots of blood that tasted of iron once. Freezing. Her chest constricts.

_(Three breaths, four breaths.)_

She reaches for her back. Warning lights sing in her hardsuit's internal computer. Life leaks through her fingers as she struggles to - to do _something_ even when she can do _nothing_, because a greater voice than hers is calling.

_(Sharp breaths quicken when they should slow. Five, six, seven now.)_

Sunlight breaks across the surface of Alchera and for a moment it is _beautiful_, but she does not see. All she can see are the black teeth of the void dotted with stars, each gleaming like teeth, and everything is spinning and there is nothing there to catch her, no_ control _as she hurtles through space with all the grace of a dancer; slow, end over end and illuminated by Amada's halo.

_(Out here the sun never sets, but people do.)_

Amada's light washes across her helmet's visor when she arches, her hands scrabbling: She is deafened by the sound of her own choking, of decompression, of bubbling, of a hiss in the dark behind her ear. For a second she sees the flash of her own face mirrored in front of her when her HMD flickers and dies.

_(And she wonders: do machine gods laugh?)_

Familiar faces made of echoes and ash - she recalls them all at once, both the living and the dead.

(_"I don't regret a thing," he'd said.)_

**Life Support...  
**-  
_(:FAILING:)_

Blackness above, below, beyond, within, outside.

**USER ALERT!  
**Systems critical.  
Extensive damage detected.

**USER ALERT!  
**Suit breach detected.  
(:Local atmosphere venting to space:)

**USER ALERT!  
**Sealants unresponsive.  
(:Systems failure imminent:)

**USER ALERT!  
**Service no. 5923-AC-2826 critical.  
(:Systems failure imminent:)

**ALERT: Emergency systems offline.**

**USER ALERT!  
**Service no. 5923-AC-2826 critical.  
(:Power levels at 12%:)

**ERROR  
**reset…..

**User alert!  
**Service no. 5923-AC-2826 unresponsive.  
(:Power levels at 03%:)

**ERROR  
**reset…..

**user alert!  
**Service no 592  
3-AC-282  
6  
unresponsive. /  
Initiati—Ng kinETIC subrou/

**ERROR  
**reset…..

_(The eighth breath never comes.)_

ERROR  
reset…..

ERROR  
reset…..

ERROR  
reset…..

ERROR  
reset…..  
reset…..  
reset…..  
reset…..  
reset…..  
reset…..  
reset…..

reset…..


	2. Such is wicked

**Such is Wicked**

* * *

"This is one hell of a pisshole."

A pale flicker behind blood-red lenses was the only indication that Thane Krios had heard Zaeed's drawling observation. There was the sound of a sharp _clack _andthe brief scent of something burnt, both of which were followed by the hollow thud of another husk hitting the barren rocks below. The drell assassin ejected his pistol's heatsink and shifted his boot when it clattered onto the dirt by his leg.

Zaeed didn't appear bothered by the drell's lack of response. The scarred human peered over the rocky slope and leaned his shoulder against a nearby boulder. Thane could hear the scruff of old skin against stone, followed by the knock of armor when Zaeed leaned over a few inches more to get a better view of the terrain below.

"Ugly son of a bitch," the merc said. He licked at the front of his teeth with his tongue and grimaced.

Thane inserted a new heatsink into his pistol and stood. Zaeed didn't bother to acknowledge the drell's presence with words, nor did the older human turn around - instead, Zaeed shifted his bulk to the side just enough to allow Thane to take position beside him.

Thane touched the nearby rock with the palm of his hand. Even through his gloves he could feel how cool it was, and the scales of his knuckles pinched together at the contact. It was the mass at the bottom of the slope that caught the assassin's attention, however - a single crumpled, leathery form that still pulsed with tiny slits of blue light interspersed by decayed flesh, wire and tubing.

_Husk._

The sight would always be seared into the drell's memory. Each wire and strip of muscle was overlayed onto the visage of thousands of others that he had seen in his time with Commander Shepard. It was this collective memory that formed his knowledge of what the humans called _abominations_.  
_  
An empty vessel, bereft of spirit, lost even to the sea.  
_  
A glob of spit sailed over the rocks and landed somewhere below. Thane's eyes flitted with the movement and came to rest on the grizzled mercenary. Zaeed wiped at his mouth and smirked when bits of dried blood stuck to his lips.

"Sorry bastard," Zaeed snorted. "That's no way to live."

Thane's secondary eyelids nictated behind his lenses. The merc arced a scruffy eyebrow at him.

"These vessels aren't alive," the drell corrected, his voice somber. "That is what makes them so..."

"God damn hard to kill," Zaeed finished, unperturbed. "Or easy." He clicked the barrel of his assault rifle against the heel of his hand. "Like shooting fish in a bloody barrel."

A flash of movement amid the rocks drew Thane's attention once more. He sighted his pistol but felt his muscles relax when the familiar burst-fire of an assault rifle temporarily deafened his right earbud. The husk collapsed in a spray of viscous liquid and bone matter. Zaeed lowered his assault rifle.

_That _one had managed to come closer before meeting its untimely - or perhaps long overdue - demise. Thane picked his way over to the husk's still form, careful to avoid soiling his boots in its remains. One of its hands twitched; Thane fired a round into the back of its soft, white skull, and didn't flinch when it moaned and sagged wetly against the dirt.

"Shepard was right to keep us here," Thane murmured. He was unaccustomed to speaking up at random, but something about the abomination's blood and the way it pooled about his feet had served to unsettle something inside of him. The drell glanced back at the mine entrance they were guarding and keyed into the comm frequency that he and Zaeed shared with Shepard. Whatever the commander was doing in there, it seemed to be going well and with minimal interference. The entrance to the mine itself was yawning and dark; a cool wind prickled at the ridges that lined Thane's head and he had every intention of staying clear of the mine's dank interior, if such was Shepard's wish.

Zaeed plopped on the ground and slung his assault rifle across his knees. The merc looked bored, and Thane felt a small pang of sympathy. Humans needed to be stimulated at a near constant rate. Many lacked the training necessary to find peace in detachment, and Zaeed, he had learned, was anything but peaceful.

"Unfortunate," Thane said, giving the husk corpse one final glance before making his way back over to his companion. Zaeed was wiping a small trickle of blood against his leather leggings. It smelled sour. Husk stench was something one could taste at the back of their throat, and Thane was careful to mediate his breathing after every kill.

"Goddamn sorry way to live. Die," Zaeed corrected, seeming to be talking mostly to himself. "Maybe even too sorry for a betraying bastard like _Vido_." The merc looked up then and his face was twisted into a contemplative scowl. Then, as though that train of thought wasn't worth pursuing, Zaeed snorted.

Even Thane, with his many years of training, scarce had time to react when Zaeed suddenly threw a piece of cloth at his face. The drell's hand shot up and clutched at the fabric, preventing it from slapping across his forehead.

"What about you, Krios? Got anyone you'd like to see as a _goddamn zombie_?"

Thane's nostrils cinched at the scent of soured husk blood. The drell was not one to turn down a gesture of good intent, however poorly given, and so he set to scrubbing flecks of decayed matter from his knee pads with the cloth Zaeed had loaned to him.

"There was a time," Thane began, his voice low, "when I might have considered it."

_(A voice pleads for him to stop. When it is silenced by the severance of vocal chords the eyes continue to plead. Agonized and dark, they plead for mercy._

_The strangled hiss of a punctured lung. Blood bubbling hot down a slaver's chest plate. Tiny rivulets of red._

_Pounding in his head like drums._

_But he is far away, both repelled and enthralled by the actions of his body, at the way it twists the bladepoint in. He is cradled in a battle-sleep, dreaming dreams of vengeance and pulses cold against his fingertips._)

Zaeed's gruff laughter drew Thane from the blurred state of memory. The drell nictated, color and shape once more solidifying around him. Tracks of orange and gray became Zaeed's face, and the twist of black and line became the merc's wry smirk.

"You and me, Krios," Zaeed said. He began scraping bits of flesh from his large, armor-plated knee-guards with a small knife. "Two men who know _revenge_. Only you got yours, and one day..." The merc's smile grew harsh and ugly, and the myriad of wrinkles that framed his pliant skin furrowed outwards. "One day I'll get mine."

Thane said nothing. He watched the knife move up and down. He watched the way its edge caught the light, shining over-bright, piercing through the blood-red lenses he wore and past his altered eyes - down, down, deep into a dark place somewhere inside him where there rested the final moments of a slaving ring; A place where the eyes of the dead would glitter, sharp as knives and just as pale, until his own eyes shut.

_You and me, Krios._

Scrape, drag, flash, scrape.

_You and me._


	3. Smiles like suns

**Smiles like Suns**

* * *

She is writing!

They said she would get better. They spoke to her and said nice things, soft things, warm things; things that felt like sleeping, but not like sleeping on a cold floor. Not like sleeping in a cage. She sleeps on beds now, wrapped in blankets and sun-warmed by open windows. She can touch her scalp and feel hair - hair that hides long-healed scar tissue and branding welts.

And she can write!

She still needs help, of course. She writes to the people who helped her and to the people who still visit in her dreams. One of them wears armor with a red stripe the color of _blood-not-blood-no-more-blood-anymore_. Most are gone, including the specter - gone to do important things for other people, people like her. But there is still one who comes to see her, and she writes to him the most.

There is a chime at the door. She looks up from her terminal. A man stands in the doorway with a small smile on his face. He wrings his hands together.

"You came!" she says. He laughs, his face reddening as he steps inside.

"It's nice to see you, too," he says. His words are thick with a strange accent she has only heard from him. "How are you doing? Are you writing?"

"Yes," she answers. "To you."

He sits beside her in a chair with his elbows on his knees. "To me?"

"See?" She points at the heading of the letter, proud that she wrote it without aid. "_To: Mister Girard._" She hesitates and her face falls. "Maybe Talitha should write another one."

"I like that one," Girard says. He smiles at the blank screen. "I think it will be a good letter."

Talitha's whole chest feels warm. "Can we go outside?" she asks.

"I'd love to," he replies, and it's like she is filled with the sun.


	4. Some crossed wires

**Some Crossed Wires**

* * *

Miranda Lawson is midway through filing a report when she feels a prickling sensation. At one time she would have thought it was nothing, but experience has taught her that is a sixth sense; a sixth sense that indicates something very alarming is about to happen, and she had better be prepared to handle it.

With a delicate pinch of her lips, Miranda has just enough time to set her datapads flat against the desk when the door to her office snaps open without warning.

"Shepard," the operative greets, pretending to be engrossed in her terminal. Footsteps clank across the floor of her office and come to a stop near one of the chairs. Miranda doesn't need to look away from the terminal in order to predict what Shepard will do next, because if Miranda has learned anything it's that Shepard is a creature of habit –

_clank, clank, clank_

- and zero subtlety.

She does a mental count of the seconds it takes before Shepard does a turnaround back to her desk. For some reason this amuses her. Regardless, Miranda's expression remains impassive as she looks up at last. "Back from your mission, I see," the operative observes. Shepard is still wearing armor. Apparently, someone had gotten sidetracked returning to their room to change.

"Just wanted to check in on you," Commander Shepard announces with a vague motion of one gauntleted hand. "Do you have a minute?"

A pungent odor wafts before Miranda's nose as the commander's presence solidifies in the middle of the room. The dark-haired woman can't suppress a grimace as she leans back in her chair, careful to keep her legs crossed and her arms loose as she scrutinizes the former N7 in front of her.

"Certainly, Shepard. I... wasn't expecting you this soon." Miranda eyes the commander's freshly dinged armor. _Heatsinks..._ and blood. Her entire office now smells like heatsinks and blood. Fantastic. All it takes is another delicate sniff before _and sweat_ is added to the list.

Shepard appears to notice Miranda's gaze. The formerly dead Spectre looks down and has the audacity to raise an eyebrow. "Am I offending you?"

Miranda clasps her hands together and leans her elbows against the edge of her seat. "Yes."

In the time it takes for Miranda to answer, Shepard has located a piece of... _something_ – flesh, debris, _God_-knows-what – between one of the links of the iconic N7 breastplate. The commander pries it away from the hardsuit and scrutinizes the odd-colored lump on the tip of a finger. Slowly, it's rolled around between the commander's thumb and forefinger. Miranda can only watch with what feels like slowly rising horror. Shepard appears entranced.

Then, with a sudden disinterested sound, Shepard goes to flick it across the office before noticing that Miranda is watching. Blinking once, the commander instead wipes the ambiguous _something_ across one armored thigh.

Miranda isn't sure whether she should be disgusted or touched.

"Not a good time for a conversation?" Shepard ventures as if that hadn't just happened.

"No." Miranda narrows her eyes. "I understand you wanted to speak with me as soon as you got back, but..." She can't ignore this any more. Her nostrils are _clenching_. "Really, Commander?"

"I shouldn't sit down, then?"

"I would appreciate it if you didn't."

Shepard's face breaks into a grin. "You win, Lawson. I'll be back in a click."

"Take your time," Miranda replies with a bemused quirk of a brow.

"I wasn't going to actually flick it, you know."

"I'm sure," she drawls. "Wiping it under the nearest surface seems more your style, after all."

"Ouch! You're really on it today."

"I know how to deal with children."

Shepard points a finger at her, and the gesture is now accompanied by an even bigger grin. "Insubordination earns you five minutes in the corner."

"Pot and kettle, commander."

Shepard laughs.

The operative shakes her head while her two-year investment _clank-clank-clank_s back out the door. _Two_ years, numerous dead personnel, innumerable late nights, and more than a few indignities...

It was times like these that Miranda wondered if she'd crossed a wire somewhere inside Shepard's head, and for some reason, the thought makes her smile.


End file.
